The concept of ‘person’ in the depth-psychological corpus occupies a contested ontological and phenomenological terrain, traversing questions of embodiment, selfhood, otherness, and psychic multiplicity. Ricoeur anchors the inquiry philosophically, insisting that ‘person’ names a single referent bearing two irreducible series of predicates—physical and mental—rather than a Cartesian duality; the concept is primitively co-equal with the concept of body, not subordinate to it. From classical Greek psychology, Sullivan traces a complementary distinction: in Homer, the phrenes stand in subordinate yet cooperative relationship to the person, establishing an early template of the self as inhabited by semi-independent psychic entities. Hillman complicates personhood through the acorn/daimon thesis, positing a second, deeper identity—the genius—that may bear a different name from the civil self and that animates character beneath the socially registered person. McGilchrist relocates the person in irreducible first-person knowledge: to know another person is necessarily to know through encounter rather than description. Across clinical voices—Gendlin, Miller, the IFS tradition, grief and trauma theorists—‘person’ functions as the locus of empathic regard, autonomy, and transformation. What unites these diverse approaches is a shared resistance to reductive accounts: the person is neither a bundle of traits, nor a naked ego, nor a social construction, but a locus of embodied, ensouled, relational becoming.
the concept of person is a notion no less primitive than that of the body… a single referent possessing two series of predicates: physical predicates and mental predicates
Ricoeur argues that ‘person’ is an ontologically primitive concept, irreducible to either body or Cartesian soul, constituted by the inseparable co-presence of physical and mental predication.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
phrenes appear to be subordinate to the person… Phrenes and person remain distinct, with the person finding in them a valuable psychic entity for coping with life’s circumstances.
Sullivan demonstrates that in early Greek psychology, the person is already conceived as a composite entity whose psychic constituents (phrenes) are distinct from yet cooperative with the unified self.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis
This kind of knowledge permits a sense of the uniqueness of the other… ‘Look, you’ll just have to meet her – I’ll introduce you.’ It’s also ‘my’ knowledge, not just in the sense that I can’t pass it on to you, but in the sense that it’s got something of me in it.
McGilchrist contends that genuine knowledge of another person is irreducibly first-person, experiential, and encounter-based, resisting propositional or descriptive reduction.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
Does the genius have one name and the person another? Is nicknaming a subtle recognition of the doppelganger, a mode of remembering that it is Fats who sits at the keyboard and Dizzy who blows the horn
Hillman proposes that the socially registered person and the daimonic genius are distinct identities, with the nickname serving as unconscious acknowledgment of this doubled selfhood.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996thesis
Just as our psyche, which is air, controls us, so breath and air encompass the whole world-order… its role is prominent. First, its nature is specified: it is made of air.
Sullivan traces in Anaximenes an early model in which psyche is the governing principle of the person, linking individual selfhood to cosmic substance.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
The narcissistic person simply does not know how profound and interesting his nature is… once he discovers that there are other figures who surround the ‘I’ personality, he can let them do some of the work of life.
Moore argues that the narcissistic fixation on a single ‘I’ impoverishes personhood; psychological health requires recognizing the plurality of inner figures surrounding and sustaining the person.
, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
psychology has focused largely on what the art object says about the person who made it… this way of reducing whatever appears in a person’s expression to inner conditions obstructs sensitivity to how external conditions affect and change the person.
McNiff critiques the reductive identification of art with its maker’s interiority, arguing that the person is shaped as much by expressive encounter with external images as by disclosed inner states.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004supporting
respond to a competent person — respond positively and for good reason. It is often after such times, after having been able to just be with you, that a person might feel like taking you into some areas that are disturbing.
Gendlin positions the relational recognition of a person’s competence as therapeutically foundational, enabling the trust required for deeper self-disclosure.
, Focusing: How to Gain Direct Access to Your Body’s Knowledge, 2010supporting
Polarization, which is conflict between protectors, leaves the raw, hurting exiles in each person unattended. Since these parents don’t have the Self-leadership yet to become the primary caretakers of their own exiles
Schwartz treats the person as an internal system in which polarized part-structures leave core vulnerable states unattended, framing personal wholeness as requiring Self-led integration.
, Internal Family Systems Therapy, 1995supporting
my own first-person model mediates my understanding of another person’s behavior… mirror neurons can be thought to be most appropriately the result of specific second-person interactions
Gallagher examines how embodied, neurological processes underpin interpersonal understanding, grounding the person’s knowledge of other persons in pre-reflective motor resonance.
, How the Body Shapes the Mind, 2005supporting
just as with Active Imagination, the running of continual fantasy through your mind regarding an external person inevitably affects the other person through the unconscious.
Johnson argues that sustained unconscious fantasy directed toward another person exerts a real psychic influence across the intersubjective field, implicating persons in each other’s inner economies.
, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, 1986supporting
listening to another adult child without judgment is possibly one of the greatest gifts we can give another person. Listening with empathy adds spirituality to the gift.
Within the ACA recovery framework, the person is honored through non-judgmental empathic witness, a practice presented as both psychological and spiritual in character.
, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012aside
Kathy was sitting there talking from her super-server sub-personality when I noticed her posture and face changing… she said that suddenly she felt very young.
Greene illustrates through astrological-psychological casework how sub-personalities partially eclipse the person’s fuller identity, with embodied cues signaling shifts among these inner figures.
, The Development of Personality: Seminars in Psychological Astrology, Volume 1, 1987aside